Profligate leftist prostitution partying from who knows where. || "It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality." -- JG Ballard. || "You try running with your sagging breasts down the middle of the fucking street. People will throw a blanket over you. And grab you. And call the police. For fuck's sake." -- Germaine Greer.

The problem with Field's criticism is that it assumes that fresh legislation is the be all and end all of government, and it has indeed become one of the key measures by which they are judged. This misses the point that it is not the quantity of bills which are passed, and New Labour has in the past been rightly accused of legislative mania, but rather the quality, on which Labour again falls down on. The immediate answer to passing frenzies and quick to evaporate moral panics is always to get something on the statute book, regardless of how those laws will end up being used and the overall effect they will have. The shining example remains the Dangerous Dogs Act, passed after a tabloid campaign and which outlaws entire breeds of dog, regardless of the dog's own nature. Last year's knife panic brought demands for anyone carrying a knife, regardless of age or reason, to be sent to prison, something which most judges are still rightly either ignoring or evading.

With this in mind, some criticism of what amounts to the next Queen's speech announced yesterdaywould be unfair. Who can blame a government in uncertain economic times, when it doesn't frankly have a clue how much money it will eventually have to play about with, from not having the most ambitious legislative programme mapped out? Added to this is that we are now less from a year away from an election, where the real big reforms and changes will doubtless be held over to put into the manifesto, and you're likely to be left with what is tinkering around the margins, dropping some of the more unpopular formerly proposed initiatives, with part-privatisation of the Royal Mail postponed and ID cards now not to be forced on anyone (although the real problem all along, the database, will still be around) while also attempting some populist gestures such as allocating more money to social housing building.

As of course this though is New Labour, they can't help but add some very real stings in the tail. The added measure in the housing commitment to make sure that "local residents" are first to be considered for new council homes has only one target, and that is the persistent myth, mined ruthlessly by the BNP, that migrants, asylum seekers and foreigners have the first crack of the whip. It's true that all councils have to bump up those who are in genuine need, whether homeless or otherwise, up towards the top, but asylum seekers and migrants are excluded from the very beginning until they are given leave to remain. Only 5% of social housing is allocated to foreign nationals, but this hasn't stopped the repeated claims that this isn't the case. That the government has now given succour to the idea, regardless of whether or not they also point out at the same time that it isn't true, it's the sort of legitimisation which the BNP and other discontents thrive upon and which they will be pointing out for years to come. It might not be entirely fair to call this "British homes for British workers", but it's not far from it.

Much the same is the case with the kind, generous, selfless gesture which is the offer of a job or training to the young who have been unemployed for over a year. Not a new announcement, but the stick being wielded is. Those who refuse a job, presumably regardless of what it is, will lose two weeks' benefit, and so on and so forth. The opposing argument will be that beggars can't be choosers, but putting someone into a job which they simply aren't suited to do is no solution at all. This conditionality was inherent in James Purnell's welfare reform bill, and it was just as damaging and potentially pernicious there as it is here. Most of those currently out of are work will welcome the possibility of a job, but not any job. One explanation for why this is especially being targeted at the young and out of work is that there is the potential to save money: tax credits, which eat into the savings made when the older out of work find employment, are not payable to those under 24. The government is therefore a winner regardless of whether a job is taken up or not.

Alongside the welcome retreat from the targets culture ingrained in the public sector under Blair, to be replaced by various rights to treatment or private tutors, although where the money's coming from is unclear, the most conspicuous absence is any real reform neccesitated by the expenses scandal. This might be for the better, as the beginning of this post argues, as legislation cobbled together in haste often fails all those involved, and it seems the current bill being rushed through is no exception, but for a prime minister who came in promising further constitutional reform, the final flushing out of the hereditary peers from the Lords is about as tame as it gets. It just confirms that as with the banking sector, parliament is getting back to normal, and far quicker than the City did. It can be argued that the public themselves didn't want major reform of Westminster, just an end to the gravy train, but at the same time it fails to answer the now critical insult that all politicians are more or less the same.

It's an attack which sticks, because all this latest package confirms is that Labour and the Conservatives are fighting a battle not over ideology, but over the little details. The key differences seem to be that the Conservatives will be slightly tougher, whether on law and order, foreign policy and the welfare system, and cut slightly more, except on health and foreign aid, and possibly education than Labour will. Little else really separates them. Neither is prepared to be honest about what they would cut, whether it's Labour who don't seem prepared to admit that they'll cut anything, or the Tories, who have no intention of telling just how harshly they're going to cut public spending. Here is where Alan Johnson's suggestion that there could be a referendum on voting reform at the same time as the election could have made so much difference. The promise that you would no longer be forced to decide which is the lesser of the two evils, with the Lib Dems joining the fray in certain areas, could have helped to suggest that there will shortly be a real choice. Instead we're fobbed off with the same old leftovers as before, regardless of which party is proposing what.

It does now appear that as I wondered back then, the key factor in Walker being charged was that his story mentioned the very real girl group Girls Aloud. It's still unclear whether he first wrote the almost identical "Pieces of Candy", which has a fictitious girl group undergoing the same torture as the members of Girls Aloud do in their version, then adapted it, but regardless, it was his decision to make it "real" that led to his prosecution. According to the prosecution, it was undertaken under the fear that those merely searching for Girls Aloud might be unlucky enough to come across Walker's fevered writings, featuring the rape, mutilation and murder and all five members of the group, and so, presumably, be "depraved and corrupted" as the Obscene Publications Act requires for there to be a conviction.

The idea that either of those things was likely was always laughable. Walker's story was (and still is) contained on an archive for writing posted on the Usenet group alt.sex.stories, and even then is not easily found; search the website itself for Girls Aloud and it is not even on the first page. It is instead hidden away on the Kristen archives section of the website, which itself has a warning which states that it is filtered by most net nanny software, then on the "putrid" sub-section, which has a further warning. You won't find it on the list though, as it's been removed, presumably at Walker's request. The page itself though does still exist. Having jumped through these hoops, you then have Walker's own warning. However, by the simple fact that the CPS thought it was worth prosecuting someone for writing a bad story, the Streisand effect has taken over, with the story now mirrored and far easier to access. My post alone on the prosecution has had a large number of hits today, meaning that any intrigued younger reader wanting to read what all the fuss was about has had far more opportunity than they ever would have had before.

That truism alone, that when you try to ban something cultural you instantly make it more alluring and more desirable regardless of its quality ought to be enough to discourage the censors, especially in this age, from attempting to do so. Walker's story can hardly be defended on artistic grounds, but it can be on the grounds that it is highly unlikely, as the psychiatrist called to defend him argued, that it would turn anyone into a sexual predator. It's also completely true that it was only likely to appeal to those already interested in such material; if someone was simply searching for "erotic celebrity fan-fiction", which fills a rather specific niche on the internet for those who prefer words to pictures, they were likely to go for more easily available writing featuring the gorgeous pouting quintet, rather than that which also involved the sawing off of arms and breasts. Unpleasant as it doubtless is for those depicted to be written about in such a way by complete strangers who then share their fantasies with others, there seems to have been very little legal action taken against sites hosting such stories. Most will admit to the vanity of searching Google for their own name; whether stars themselves dig deep into the darker recesses of the internet and discover such writing is another matter entirely.

Quite how much it cost for Walker to be brought to trial, let alone the police and CPS time dedicated to considering whether he should be charged over fantastical words he wrote is irrelevant when it comes to what it has done to the man himself. Regardless of his own sexual predilections and fantasies, and that he wrote such things is no indication whatsoever that he is partial to acting out anything like that his protagonists do in his stories, his life has quite possibly been ruined. Anyone now "Googling" for him when he applies for job, having lost his as a civil servant when he was charged, will soon discover he was up before the beak on the charge of writing perverted stories about a popular beat combo, which is likely to do wonders to his chances of finding employment. It ought to be ridiculous in 2009 that anyone writing fiction, even if it is fiction which features real people, should be charged with obscenity; that someone should be potentially ruined because of it is not just ridiculous, it's disgraceful. No thought however seems to have been put into this before charging was proceeded with, just as no one at the IWF presumably thought through the consequences when they boggled at the original submission to them. This ought to lead to a reform of our obscenity laws, yet if anything they seem likely to be tightened further still.

Quite apart from the cost of that 500lb bomb to kill one lonely person doubtless scared out of their wits and without a clue what to do, they don't seem to have noticed the contradiction between dropping 500lb bombs on buildings and that "limited success" of engaging the residents. Destroying buildings with huge explosions and winning hearts and minds; quite clearly these two things aren't incompatible after all.

Expenses which aren't a scandal.

As non-stories go, BBC executives claim hardly anything on expenses over five year period is a pretty high ranking one. Director-General claims for flight back to Britain to deal with manufactured newspaper scandal, as any other business would accept in an instant, creative director claims on insurance for stolen handbag, and a £100 bottle of champagne for someone regarded by many as a national treasure is about as weak as it gets. To give an idea of just how removed these are from the MPs expenses, Radio 1's controller Andy Parfitt claimed £340.43 on meals last year (PDF), the highest such claim. That's £60 less than most MPs were claiming in a single month on food. To be sure, these are high-earning individuals, spending our money when they should perhaps be forking out for it themselves. Yet these claims in any other business of a similar size would barely raise an eyebrow, as the more honest outside commentators are admitting. Prince Charles cost us £3 million last year; the BBC's executive expenses over 5 years were £363,963.83. I know in an instant which I'd plump for every time.

The BBC though is nothing if it is not self-flagellating. You can imagine the delight of the Daily Mail, responsible for the ridiculous storm over "Sachsgate" at the news that Mark Thompson claimed back on the cost of his flights to deal with the fallout from it. Hence the story has been towards the top of their news throughout the day, the top story on Newsnight, and you have Martin Bell, saint of all sleaze allegations, denouncing these more than reasonable costs as unacceptable. Perhaps the Guardian's comment sections are hardly representative, but to call the consensus being overwhelmingly towards these expenses being for the most part highly reasonable would be putting it too lightly, with Emily Bell taking rather heavy flak for her piece.

She does however have something of a point; there is a contradiction between whether the BBC is a public or private organisation. Not a single person in the country believes that Jonathan Ross is worth £6 million a year, and he would almost certainly not get a similar sum now from a truly commercial organisation, even if he would have done before. The fact remains though that for the most part the BBC does have to compete, even if ITV and CH4 claim to high heaven that they're now hardly treading water. We expect so much from the BBC, and when you have the outrages like Jonathan Ross's salary and some of the truly dreadful programmes which it occasionally produces, whether it be almost everything that BBC3 broadcasts or the likes of Hotel Babylon, it undermines the general good which the corporation radiates. It could be better: it could close down BBC3 entirely, and also perhaps do without Radio 1 which has deteriorated to such a stage that putting it down would be the kind thing to do, and reinvest the money elsewhere, but no one has yet had the temerity to suggest that the BBC should do more with less, except for those that have a very good commercial reason for saying so.

At the same time, the public themselves also don't seem to know what they want. The BBC's new guidelines, based on research conducted with a representative sample of 2,700 viewers and listeners say that the corporation should never "condone malicious intrusion, intimidation and humiliation." Presumably then that means that the Apprentice will not be returning to BBC1. While the BBC has for the most part eschewed the "talent" reality shows which ITV is now relying upon, with the exception of the late Fame Academy and the "celebrity" shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, they would also presumably now be barred by such rules. After all, what are the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent except celebrations of intimidation and humiliation of those that dare to imagine that they've got something special when they conspicuously haven't? These are the top rated shows of the last decade, and apparently the public dislike them even while lapping them up. It also simply doesn't seem to have occurred to some respondents that they can change the channel if there's swearing on one side, with the BBC now promising that strong language will only be heard in "exceptional circumstances" between 9pm and 10pm on BBC1. It wasn't that long ago when strong language didn't require any such warning before the programme began, especially later on at night, yet now there are warnings across the board, all while 46% say the standards have slipped in recent years.

Despite its strength, there is a timidity and an apologetic nature about the BBC at present, as if they seem to realise that it can't last much longer, and that it'll all be better when it is cut down to size, something which we will then bitterly regret for ever more. At a time when there is so much unaccountability, both in public and private life, the BBC is one of the more responsive and open organisations. The danger is that it'll brought down because of that rather than the opposite.

This is the sort of thing that jihadists in Iraq have been doing now for a number of years; first killing dozens, then targeting them again when the bereaved bury their dead. It has also been used as a tactic in Pakistan itself. One anti-jihadist blog commented on one of these attacks that apparently nothing was sacred, except jihad itself. It seems that the same applies to the United States, regardless of those at the top of the chain of command.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

A handy cut out and keep guide for hacks: Islamic dress.

For all those out there who are still terribly confused about what and what isn't a burqa (also spelled burkha, burka, etc), as Daily Express and Star journalists clearly are, let septicisle solve your problems:

This is a burqa. It's clearly identifiable by how there is not even an opening for the eyes; rather, it has a mesh through which the wearer can see (badly). These are mainly worn in Afghanistan and by the most conservative adherents of Islam, mostly apart from Afghanistan in parts of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The numbers wearing them in this country probably number in the very low hundreds (could even be dozens or lower), if that, with a similar number in France, where the current controversy is brewing.

These are niqabs. They're clearly identifiable by how there is only an opening for the eyes. These are more widely worn than the burqa, across the Sunni Islamic world (the Shia mainly settle for the normal hijab, if any head covering is worn) although again almost only by the more conservative adherents. The numbers wearing them in this country probably number in the low thousands, if that, with a similar number in France, where the current controversy is brewing.

Next time in the handy cut out and keep guide for hacks: what is and what isn't a disease.

This isn't the place as yet for a long consideration of her time as editor of the biggest selling newspaper in the country, but it remains the case that for the most part Wade proved to be a less controversial editor than her time at the News of the World suggested she would be. The main bungles which did happen during her watch, which included her "BONKERS BRUNO LOCKED UP" front page splash, to say nothing of the time she was arrested after drunkenly slapping her former husband are not much to write home about when you consider the Sun's history, especially while Kelvin MacKenzie was editor.

All this said, the Sun has certainly become to an extent more liberal during Wade's tenure. Whether this is down to her or because in general society is becoming more tolerant is unclear, but the paper which not so long back was leading campaigns against the possibility of Julian Clary becoming host of the Generation Game because of his sexuality, or which asked on its front page whether the country was being run by a "gay mafia" has moved on. During the Big Brother racism scandal it ran a front page, which although somewhat hypocritical, was the sort of thing it would have never done only a few years ago. It still loathes asylum seekers, failed or otherwise, but that's hardly unique in the tabloid world. Both the Daily Mail and Express are far more reactionary than the Sun on almost all of these matters.

The Sun still matters most though because of its sale and its influence. While the Mail may be catching up, or even caught up, the Sun is still courted by politicians looking for the nod of approval from Rupert Murdoch. He is, after all, the real power behind the throne, and any editor of any of his papers is only following the rules put down by him. His recent comments about David Cameron, that he has to be a second Thatcher if he's to gain his full approval, showed just how politicians have to portray and present themselves to get support. It should be remembered that this is a man who has no vote in this country, who has in the past made it his task to pay as little tax in this country as possible, and who is fundamentally unaccountable to anyone other than himself. Whoever becomes the next editor of the paper, and no one seems to have any idea who it's likely to be, the real power will not lie with he or she.

Update: Stan points out the in comments that I forgot about the Alfie Patten non-story, which also should go down as one of her worst moments.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Dragged kicking and screaming.

A lot of nonsense has been written and spoken, not least by the candidates for the job themselves, about just how big a role the speaker of the Commons can have in reforming parliament. The worst candidate, by a huge margin, was easily Margaret Beckett, the establishment while not resembling the standard establishment figure. No longer with a government job to perform abysmally in, it was a frightening prospect that she'd be the one to be calling the shots, and that she didn't even bother to make even the slightest noises about change was a sign that she might perhaps just wing it.

As it turned out, the original predictions that John Bercow would walk it came true. To my mind, and this may well cause some surprise, the best candidate was Ann Widdecombe. Ignore her politics, and instead you had someone who clearly is as tough as old boots and could have shaken things up slightly. More to the point, she was only to be an interim candidate, and so if she turned out be useless or hopelessly biased, she'd be gone by next year anyway. Bercow was though however the second best alternative, and that he so coveted the job was not necessarily a downside. That he was so loathed by the Tories themselves, who seemed to imagine they had a divine right to control the chair, also helped, and just how grim they looked when he took the chair has to be one of the most satisfying sights in parliament for quite some time. It seems doubtful though that he will be any more partisan than Michael Martin was at his worst, and his prospectus to be speaker, while inevitably unlikely to be instituted in full, may well help with the reform that is needed. No one was going to be a panacea, but Bercow is hardly going to be the worst of all worlds.

A new media martyr.

If the events in Iran are the first time that "citizen journalism" has truly come into its own, helped undoubtedly by the fact that the foreign media have for the most part been successfully banished from the streets, then Neda Agha-Soltan(i), a young protester apparently shot dead by a Basij militiaman has become the first most visible martyr, not just of the uprising, but also of the new media age.

Partly this is because the video of her death is both so horrifying and with it, so cathartic. Unlike many of the other videos which litter the internet which show death and violence, few if any so vividly show a life ebbing away, the soul breaking free of the corporeal body. As her eyes glaze over and as the blood, filling her lungs, is breathed out of her nose and mouth, there are few ends that could so disturb, galvanise and ensure that she will be mourned for years to come. It helps that we don't actually see her murderer, or the moment when she was actually shot; that would diminish the empathy that comes naturally, and instead direct the anger at the individual responsible rather than the state that he or she represents.

Undoubtedly, many will be uncomfortable with the fact that this revolution in filming and writing to the bottom means that we get the sort of material, such as the death of Neda, that broadcasters themselves will not generally show. The BBC have only shown grabs of her on the ground, and before the blood begins to pour from her mouth and nose. Some will argue that such censorship, or rather moderation, is not something to object to: after all, not everyone wants to see such material, even on the news, especially when children also might be watching. Yet it also means that we don't have the full picture, or see the brutality and violence at first hand which such crackdowns bring. Even when such material was more carefully veted however, some of the most iconic images of war remain from the Vietnam era: the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, and the naked Phan Thị Kim Phúc running from a napalm attack still have the power, even today, to shock and awe.

Others will object that someone's death could be used in ways in which that person may not have wanted, or even how her family would want. Whether she was actually protesting may be in doubt; latest reports say that she left a car she was in for only a period of minutes, but that those minutes turned deadly does only illustrate just what those protesting are defying in order to demand that their votes count. It can't be denied that dying in such a way means that it becomes public property, by definition. Most would rather want their final moments to be private, but no one also would wish to die in such a way. When we lose the choice in how we pass from this world, we can only hope that our deaths are not prolonged and that we are surrounded by friends, although it remains a truism that everyone dies alone, regardless of method or cause. Neda's was not a lonely death, and the power of it may well yet further help the protests towards a brighter future for Iran as a whole. The idea of martyrdom and sacrifice is highly ingrained in both Shia and Persian culture, and despite our reservations, we can only hope that it further denies moral authority from both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. Regardless of how the next days and weeks pan out, she is unlikely to be forgotten.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Hardly the end of the affair.

When it comes to shooting yourself in the foot, the parliamentary authorities have done the equivalent of blowing the entire appendage off with a sawn-off shotgun. The expenses scandal was finally begin to simmer down, the Telegraph having already deciphered and disseminated all the most outrageous claims, with the full release of the documents in full threatening to be a damp squib, only of interest for those who really wish to know exactly what their MP's favourite taxpayer-funded meal is. By censoring almost the entirety of some of the claims, all they've succeeded in doing is bringing the bile back to the very front of the throat of every phone-in ranter in the country.

At times since the Telegraph first splashed on their ill-gotten gained CD/DVD, I've felt like the only person in the country not to be demanding that MPs be summarily executed with their heads then displayed atop spikes on London Bridge. Of course, that MPs have turned out to be such humongous hypocrites, evading tax, whether it was "allowed" under the rules or not, claiming that they live with their sister and spending our money on duck houses and cleaning moats is certainly disreputable, but I find it hard to summon any great fury mainly because except in a very few tiny cases, there seems to have been no actual rules broken, let alone fraud. As much as some claim to be whiter than whiter, most of us will probably admit to trying it on at times; at worst, what most have done is simply stretched the rules as they existed, while some went further and did so to absolute breaking point, such as Gerald Kaufman with his attempt to charge the taxpayer for an £8,000 Bang and Olfsen TV. That I find for some reason far more enraging than some of the more notorious claims. Equally, the opprobrium hasn't fallen on those most deserving of it: those that have other highly rewarding interests that still didn't think that claiming for "seagrass", mugs from Tate Modern and "Elephant lamps", as Michael Gove did could possibly be objectionable. Then there's just bitter, wormwood-esque irony, like George Osborne claiming a staggering £47 for 2 DVDs featuring a speech of his on "value for taxpayers' money".

Mostly though, as I've mentioned before, there just seems little reason to get angry when there are so many more important things to be livid about. We are talking at most, of millions of pounds being improperly spent or claimed; at the moment we're currently paying around £30bn simply on the interest from our current debt. There's the millions, if not billions being spent on management consultants; the billions being wasted because of the government obsession with the private finance initative; and the countless billions being poured into the toilet which is this government's repeated, incessant, hapless IT schemes. These though are mindboggling sums, which cannot be directly linked to any one individual, hence there's no one to blame. Whether it's bankers, where Fred Goodwin rapidly became the biggest hate figure in the country, or Margaret Moran or Hazel Blears, we can instead put a face to the fury. It's the same with benefit fraud, where the newspapers always have a field day. It doesn't seem though that anything other than money could have caused such a scandal, or at least one which has inspired such rage and gone on for so long. It isn't the case, as Anthony Steen put it, that people were envious of his big house; it is however those whom have failed to benefit from the boom years who are now falling even further behind are fuming at how MPs could kit out their houses and pay their food bills without even a thought for how their own constituents are having to live.

More depressing is how the momentum which was behind the moves towards reform, which went hand in hand with the revelations in the Telegraph for some time, has suddenly dropped off. Partially it fell away as attention turned to whether Gordon Brown was going to survive as prime minister or not, but it also seems to have failed because MPs were only ever paying lip service to it, and as the race to be the next speaker has shown, as attention has turned away so has the belief that there has to be change. The House of Commons is a notoriously conservative institution, overturning even Robin Cook's minor reforms to the working hours because some MPs felt it had ruined the "atmosphere", and as the everlasting cliche goes, turkeys are unlikely to vote for Christmas given the choice, but you would have thought that even they would have realised that something has to be done. It does remain whether or not the public themselves ever were really behind such wide-ranging reform, but it is still quite clearly what is needed to re-energise politics. The exchanges of the last week, with the nonsense on stilts which has been the portraying of Cameron as "Mr 10%" and the general refusal to even be slightly straight with the public on the cuts which are going to have to come have only reinforced that. The European election results were both a warning and an opportunity: they showed politics at its worst and best, with the BNP victories because Labour voters stayed at home, and the successes of other minor parties showing the breadth of political dissent and debate which is stifled in the three party consensus which is Westminster. Only those that are prepared to end that monopoly deserve to be supported at the next election, and whatever our thoughts on the expenses furore, we will have them to thank if it does eventually lead to the change which is so desperately needed.

150. It was only when news surfaced of the mistreatment of detainees at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004 that the UK Government realised that there were real risks of CIDT:Back in 2003 we were concerned about secret facilities but we did not at that stage, I think, make an automatic connection between secret facilities and mistreatment. That sort of connection grew later as more allegations came to light or… things like Abu Ghraib came to light, which led you to believe, just a minute, if that is happening there, what might be happening in secret facilities.

This itself was unbelievable: what was the point of "secret" facilities except to subject those held there to the sort of treatment which would eventually severely embarrass both the United States and this country? The idea itself that MI6 couldn't or didn't know what was going on was even more ridiculous: what is the point of intelligence gathering organisations if they can't even work out what our allies are up to?

We know now for certain however that MI6 knew full well what was going on as soon as they started being allowed access to prisoners with UK connections, as could have been expected. In January 2002, after an MI6 officer realised that someone in US custody was being mistreated, they sent out official advice which while telling their agents that they could not be seen to condone torture, they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent it, something which directly breaches the obligation not to be complicit in that mistreatment.

MI6 can't be blamed for lying; that is after all what they are trained to do from the moment they join the service and is to be expected. Our politicians can however be blamed, for both knowing full well what was happening despite their denials and for publishing those denials as if they were true. There is only one way to get to the bottom of the abuses which have happened under the rendition programmes and the mistreatment in the name of the war on terror, and that is through a fully independent judicial inquiry. At the same time, the ISC needs to be abolished and a fully independent watchdog of the security services needs to be established, with the Independent Police Complaints Commission as the model, modified as necessary. Liars may then not be able to prosper after all.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Analogue Britain.

For once, you have to hand it to the Tories. Their description of the Digital Britain report as "government of the management consultants, for the management consultants by the management consultants" could hardly ring truer. Ofcom, that mightiest of quangos, has always been run with an innate bias towards commercial television, probably because those in charge used to be... heads of commercial communications companies. That much is evident in Lord Carter's report, the former head of Ofcom as well as late of the much maligned NTL.

On the face of it, things could have far worse, especially on the piracy front. The lobbying, not just from the usual suspects but from unions who have also bizarrely signed up to the updated claims that home taping is killing music etc has been ferocious, and their favourite fantasy, that there would be three strikes and then you're out, was mooted as being the plan. Instead there's the continuation of the letter writing scheme, and the possibility that ISPs might be forced to send details of the most prolific and unrelenting uploaders and downloaders to the rights holders, which seems unlikely to be followed through by those who wish to keep their businesses growing. Part of the problem that the record industry has is that they have been for so long and continue to be some of the most unsympathetic characters around, claiming to be "innovating and investing" when all they do is churn out the same old shit time and time again, as you could not fail to notice by looking at the current top 10, or the "emergence" of yet more manufactured faux-soul crap as Pixie Lott and Paloma Faith, only a year on from the manufactured faux-soul crap of Adele and Duffy. The same is the case with the film industry; most deserving of protection is the games industry, but they are hardly even noticed. The idea also that ISPs can cut file-sharing by 70% in a year is a hilarious, and obviously made by those without a slightest clue of how the internet works.

The top-slicing of the licence fee is far more contentious. While using that left over from the digital switchover fund to put towards universal broadband is a fair enough move, the BBC having to step in to ensure that ITV keeps putting out regional news is ridiculous on two levels. Firstly, that ITV doesn't have the money to keep such a public service going, when they have three digital channels transmitting constant repeats and on ITV2 some of the worst programmes ever to be broadcast on British television, no doubt costing millions, and secondly that if ITV really can't afford it, why duplicate something which the BBC already provides? Wouldn't it make far more sense to instead enable the struggling local newspaper groups to step into the breach, giving them the opportunity to invest and transform themselves at the same time? Apparently not. As the BBC Trust has argued, all the splashing around of the licence fee will do is further the resentment of what is, despite the great good that the BBC does, a regressive tax. At the moment everyone knows what they're getting from it; the cutting and redistributing of it will only confuse and confound matters.

Most lacking though is any vision for rolling-out the next generation of broadband. By 2012 all are supposed to be able to access a 2meg connection, which is just about good enough for the internet as it currently is; by 2017, when the so-called third generation of broadband connectivity is meant to be completed, things are going to be incredibly different. Difficult as it is to predict, by then we're bound to be seeing the streaming of ultra high definition content as standard, requiring bandwidth far beyond that currently available to the vast majority. As thinkbroadband points out, by 2017 at the moment we're only going to have the kind of network capacity which the more enlightened and forward thinking nations have currently already put in place, leaving us way behind the pack. The Guardian also identifies the other issue with the £6 tax on the cost of a landline to fund this: it's a subsidy from the public going direct to the private sector, the ones who will reap all the benefits. Once again the foolishness of privatising assets and not taking even the slightest of stakes in the emergent companies rears its ugly head.

The resulting package as a whole is a fudge, as seems to be the only thing that the current government can agree on, pleasing no one and priortising nothing. Management consultants it seems have a lot to answer for.

Quite why the Times took it upon itself to discover the true identity of the winner of this year's Orwell prize for blogging is itself a mystery. Its justifications, such as they are, that he revealed details about cases and gave tips on how to evade justice, are pitiful. NightJack had done nothing to attract attention to himself other than presumably putting himself forward for the Orwell prize, and the fact that he could write to such an ability that he pulled in readers who admired his ability to analyse both his job, the politics surrounding it and the social problems which he had to deal with. NightJack had actually stopped blogging shortly before he won the Orwell prize, and had put his sights on writing a novel, rather than bringing out a book of the best of the blog, for which he had presumably had numerous offers. He didn't even turn up to receive the prize, as someone wanting to remain anonymous would never have done, and had also undoubtedly not economically benefited from his writing.

It would be tempting to put down the reason for the Times exposing Nightjack as simple jealousy that they didn't have a writer of such calibre prepared to put pen to paper for them, yet the Times has been one of the few newspapers that have given space to reasonably well-known bloggers to write original pieces for it. Likewise, the smug neo-con Oliver Kamm was taken on by the paper and is now one of its leader writers as a direct result of his stultifying blogging and obsession with attacking Noam Chomsky. Quite rightly, others have remembered how the Sunday Times treated the Girl With a One Track Mind, the sex blogger who was outed in a fashion which would have shamed the tabloids. It isn't an exact comparison, as Zoe Margolis had just published a book of her blog and didn't write about anything as high-minded as Nightjack, preferring to detail her tedious sex life in a pseudo-intellectual style, but it seems to have been a portent of what was to come.

The main reason though for why this is such an ill wind for journalism as a whole is the implications it has for whistleblowing, which if the Times had stopped to consider for a second it would have surely noted. Eady has in effect ruled that anyone in the public services who wants to bring attention to something which they think is a cause for concern, but which by doing so they would breach "discipline regulations" has no right to protection. Arguably, Nightjack was not performing such a public service in his writing, but this surely still has a potentially chilling effect for those who do. In fact, what this ruling seems to do is ensure that those who do want to whistleblow will have to go to publications like the Times for protection; if they do it themselves through blogging then newspapers have a justification for uncovering their true identity.

Newspapers concerned with the protection of their sources will be deeply worried by this ruling. If Nightjack has no right to privacy, then just who does? According to the Times' analysis, Eady based part of his decision on the previous ruling concerning George Galloway's exposure of Mazher Mahmood, a battle which this blog was involved in. Ironically, it was then the Times' sister publication which was fighting against their top reporter having his cover blown, but the two cases are surely completely different. Mahmood was a journalist who had ruined people's lives and had arguably been involved in entrapping individuals to develop his stories. When he himself failed to entrap Galloway in a similar fashion, he reacted to the publication of two grainy, unclear photographs in a ridiculous fashion, claiming it put his life in danger, something which was treated with short shrift. Mahmood was a hypocrite; Nightjack is not, and was not exposing anyone.

Just how potentially damaging this ruling could be is illustrated by the current battle going on in Northern Ireland, where the Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen has been defending herself against attempts by the police service of the province to obtain the identity of her sources, who informed her that the Real IRA had claimed responsibility for the murder of two soldiers outside Massereene barracks in Antrim in March. Unlike Mahmood, Breen's life almost certainly would be threatened should her source be revealed, yet that hasn't stopped the police from treating her life with such apparent contempt. Less seriously, this surely also threatens journalists who write under pseudonyms, something which the Times has again also overlooked; why should they be protected when bloggers aren't?

Furthermore, isn't the current situation in Iran, where those trying to let the world know what is happen are having to resort to Twatter further evidence of how dangerous this ruling is? According to Eady, those doing so are indulging in public activity where they have no right to anonymity, the kind of idea that would delight totalitarian regimes everywhere. Similarly, newspapers would be outraged were the government to do what the Times has just done, demanding that they reveal the source for sensitive articles, claiming it would be a threat to press freedom. It turns out that all the Times and News International care about is their own self-interest, which rather undermines their repeated past criticisms of Eady and the Human Rights Act for establishing a privacy law by stealth. It seems that celebrities are protected, while everyone else is fair game. The Times may yet come to regret their supreme selfishness and lack of dedication to protecting sources bitterly.

Monday, June 15, 2009

An open letter to the Iranian youth: one solution, revolution.

Dear friends,

Very few of you are likely to actually read this, what with many internet sites being blocked by the authorities and with the language barrier, but those of us watching overseas with trepidation at the turmoil on the streets of your capital and other cities are both worried and optimistic in equal measure at the sudden eruption of what appears to the beginning of a movement against the lack of freedom which has become all the more burdensome since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.

That result was partially sparked by apathy. After two terms of the reformist inclined Khatami, his liberalising measures stymied and stopped in their tracks by the Guardian Council and your supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, it was little wonder that some of you were dismayed and simply didn't turn out. During that time there were protests against the rigidly conservative social mores and censorship imposed upon you, both in 1999 and 2003, both of which ended with more repression and the rounding up of the ringleaders, whilst the candidates who wanted change were denied the opportunity to stand in elections. You had seen what the response was to the slightest call for change, and no one will blame you for temporarily taking the eye of the ball.

It sometimes takes a polarising figure to set off in motion movements which have the potential to lead wherever you want to take them. If you'll forgive the already rather hackneyed comparison, Bush inexorably led to Obama. Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, serial liar, economic disaster and general buffoon, but highly appealing to those who have nothing to whom he offers much, similar perhaps to Hugo Chavez, also attractive but undoubtedly a centralising and double-edged personality, is what led you to coalesce around Mir Hossein Mousavi, someone previously unknown in the West, although our attention span at the best of times is not the greatest. Mousavi was not the most liberal and reformist inclined candidate, but was a happy medium; you knew that Mehdi Karroubi simply couldn't win. For those of us who have recently had to put up with everyone talking about "snouts being in the trough" because their MP claimed a few dinners with taxpayers' money, which it seems is all that we care about, the sight of the vast crowds turning out, the almost party atmosphere as the "morality police" stayed out of the way for the first time in years was inspiring and made us believe that you too were about to choose change.

Doubtless many of you were worried that Ahmadinejad would sneak home, Mousavi having only towards the end of the campaign gained the support that he needed, and if he had, similarly you would have almost certainly accepted it. We can't know for certain, but your response above all suggests that the vote was stolen. Why, the cynics will suggest, would the Guardian Council have allowed Mousavi and Karroubi to stand if they weren't prepared to potentially let them become president, when they could have denied them to begin with, but it seems simply that your rulers didn't expect you to turn out in numbers similar to 1997. How though could Mousavi have been beaten in his home state? Why was the result announced within 2 hours? Why did the Mousavi campaign believe, and indeed have been told that they had been the run away winners by the interior ministry only for it subsequently turn out the Ahmadinejad had won with 67% of the vote?

Your thoughts will almost certainly be turning back to 1979, or rather what you have been taught about it. The overthrowing of the Shah, supported to the hilt by the CIA, with his departure still recently bemoaned by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, was without doubt a wonderful thing. Sadly though, like many other revolutions, from the French to the Russian to the Chinese, the replacement has turned out to be little better than what came before, if not in some cases worse. While 1979 occurred because the people were united, whether they were religious or atheists, together they triumphed. It was then that those who objected to the establishment of a theocracy were purged, imprisoned and broken. Since then change has had to be incremental, and slight, and you have worked within those imposed boundaries, respecting what your parents and elders had achieved.

Isn't it now clear however, that those very constraints have become intolerable? They allowed you to vote for reform, and then they denied those elected to implement it the opportunity to do so. Now they have denied you the opportunity for your vote to even be counted. In its way, this has turned out to be to your advantage: the change that most of you want would probably have been denied had Mousavi been allowed to ascend to the presidency. Those of you who want to have the choice whether or not you wear the hijab, let alone other far more radical changes, would have almost certainly been left disappointed.

Even when it seems this clear, you are almost certainly scared and hesitant about the conclusion which you have independently reached. Would overthrowing the theocracy be not just disrespecting, but spitting in the face of your relatives and those who fought for that initial freedom, and also then while the West supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons during the war with Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a million? Certainly, there are millions within your country who are happy with the way they are ruled: otherwise no one would have voted for Ahmadinejad, or his even more conservative opponent. This will lead to fissure and disputes, almost certainly within your own families.

Yet the reward which you can now potentially acquire is worth both enduring the above and the lives of those who will fall and have already fallen in pursuit of the freedom you want. Some of you will wonder whether Ayatollah Khamenei's unprecendented offer of a inquiry into the vote is worth waiting for. You have now though a similarly unprecendented opportunity: the government is uncertain of how to react, even as reports come in of the shootings in the middle of the night. You may not have this chance again for years. Whether you want simply Mousavi to be president, or for this to be the end of the theocracy, you need to take to the streets in the same or even higher numbers as today, and stay there until you get what you want. Further action may well be required; you may well have to take arms up to defend yourselves, but you can be safe in the knowledge that the world is watching. It's unlikely now that another Tienanmen could take place: use that to your advantage. And remember, even if despite everything, the authorities win, you carry a new world in your hearts. That is what matters.

Finally, in a change to our usual policy of giving the worst tabloid article of the weekend prize to either Amanda Platell or Lorraine Kelly, this week John Major and Douglas Hurd have triumphed, with their call for outside talent to be brought to the dispatch box. This from the people who brought you the Cones Hotline. And yes, I'll attempt to get back into the swing of things proper on Monday.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Blears today, gone tomorrow.

You have to hand it to Hazel Blears, if there's one thing she has in abundance, it's pure chutzpah. She wasn't plotting, she regrets "insulting" Gordon Brown, she wishes she hadn't worn a brooch with "rocking the boat" on it, and it was careless to resign only a day before the local elections. If you wanted to extend the rather tired Stalinist analogy, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was Blears having to confess to her crimes before she takes the bullet in the back of the head.

Except it later turns out that she's now facing a motion of no confidence, albeit one she seems likely to survive, rather like how she herself failed to displace Gordon Brown despite of course now denying that she ever wished for that to happen. Could Blears denouncing herself and that motion possibly be connected?